


Season's Greetings

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: due South
Genre: Banter, Christmas, Christmas Cards, DSSS Treat, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Family, Fluff, Gift Fic, M/M, POV Third Person Limited, Shopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray and Ray discuss Hallmark cards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Season's Greetings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mizface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizface/gifts).



> DSSS treat for mizface.

“I hate Christmas,” Kowalski announced in the middle of the greeting card aisle.

“That’s the biggest lie you’ve told in, oh, at least seventy-two hours,” Ray told him, which it totally was. 

Normally, Kowalski was like an overgrown kid about Christmas.  The guy got more excited about opening presents than some of Ray’s nieces and nephews.  He liked shopping for presents almost as much; he was one of these people who hunted around for just the perfect thing for everybody he knew.  Unlike Ray, he was good at _finding_ that perfect thing; put that together with Ray’s nose for bargains, and the two of them made an unstoppable powerhouse shopping team.  Plus having Kowalski along made the whole pre-holiday department store mayhem actually entertaining.

Except when he melted down for no reason like a six-year-old who’d refused to take his nap.  Honestly, the man’s lower lip was actually sticking out.

“Fine.  I don’t.  I just hate Hallmark.”

“Well, that, I can get behind.”  Ray ruffled the back of Kowalski’s hair until Kowalski swatted his hand away and told him to knock it off.  But it didn’t totally shake Kowalski out of his funk.

“C’mon, what’s got you in a snit?”

Kowalski shrugged.  “Nothing.  It’s dumb.”

Which was code for _twist my arm ‘till I spill it_ , so Ray badgered him:

“Okay, so what dumb thing are you snit-ing about?”

“Don’t think you can say _snit-ing,_ ” grumbled Kowalski.

“Course I can.  I just did.”

“Wise ass.  Want me to call Canada and ask Fraser if that’s a word?”

“You’ve already used up your call-Fraser-to-win-the-argument quota for the month.”

“Bullshit.  I’ve only called him twice,” said Kowalski.

“Three times.”

“What three times?  There was the thing about whether chickens can fly.  And the thing about the war of 1812.”

“Which you only brought up in the first place to have an excuse to call Fraser to tell us about it,” Ray said.

“Yeah, so?  I can use my quota however I want.  And that was twice.”

“And you also asked him whether it was Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant who—”

“That doesn’t count.  That was a regular phone call, it just happened to come up—”

“ _Just happened_ , my ass.  Anyway, even if it that’s true, it still counts,” Ray said.  There were some things you had to be a hard-ass about, or the delicate balance of domestic life would go right down the toilet.  “Look, you going to tell me what’s eating you or not?”

Kowalski gave the bottom of the card-display a soft kick.

“It’s just these dumb cards.  I mean look at this: who buys this garbage?  Google-eyed sparrows and singing snowmen and stupid lacy angels and—”

“Yeah, so?  Hallmark is dumb.  This is news?”

“No, but look.”  Kowalski brandished a card in Ray’s face.  “ _Son and His Wife._   Who sends a card to _Son and His Wife,_ like she’s not even part of the family?  Even Stella’s parents sent us cards to _Daughter and Son-in-Law._   Or, you know, fancy ones where you get to write in your own damn message.”

“What I want to know is, where are the cards addressed to _Son and That Floozy He Shacked Up With?”_ said Ray.  “Or _Son and That Guy We All Pretend Is Just His Housemate?”_

He regretted the joke as soon as he made it, because of course that was what this was all about.  But it was too late: Kowalski was already throwing a punch at the flimsy shelf full of cards, which went down with a crash in an artificial snowstorm of flying paper.

Ray grabbed him by both arms before he could do any more damage.

“Okay, okay, yes, the people at Hallmark have all the imagination of a bottle of glue.  Now get a grip, because I don’t want to have to shell out for seventeen million ruined cards that no one in their right mind would buy in the first place.  That would totally be helping the bad guys win.  Plus, if we get busted for vandalism, we’ll never be able to show our faces in the bullpen.  Okay?”

“Yeah.  Okay.”  Kowalski’s arms relaxed and he dropped his head, so Ray let go of him.  Kowalski scrubbed the heels of his hands over his face.  “Sorry.”

“Hey, I already knew you’re a public menace.”  Ray gave him a quick rub between the shoulderblades.  “Almost as bad as going Christmas shopping with Fraser.”

“Hey!  I have never gotten anyone beat up, arrested, or involved in a car chase when I’ve been shopping with you.  Not one single time.”

“What about last year?”  Ray bent to grab one end of the card shelf, and Kowalski automatically followed suit. 

“That was a friendly misunderstanding.  Totally different,” Kowalski protested as they got the shelf upright.  “Besides, what about you and that psycho mom practically getting into a wrestling match year before last?”

“Hey, matchbox cars are sacred!” 

“And did I complain, even though it almost got us banned from Toys ‘R’ Us?  No, I did not.  I backed you up.  So I think it’s pretty low for you to go around complaining about me getting into an unavoidable dispute with Jimmy Torcelli from fucking third grade, which I did not even start, by the way.”

They were both down on their knees now, picking up cards and stuffing them back into the display shelves in no particular order.  A picture of a polar bear rolling on its back touching its toes caught Ray’s eye.

“Now, see, here’s what I’m talking about,” he said.  “ _Wishing you all the joys of the holiday season_ , yeah, okay, at least that’s something you can send to practically anybody.  But what we really need is one that says, _Happy holidays, from your partner, all two of him._ ”

“We could write that in.”  Kowalski took the card and dropped it into their temporarily-abandoned shopping basket.  “Fraser likes the personal touch anyway.  And. . .here, for Stella.”  He handed Ray a surprisingly tasteful snowflakes-and-stars card with the message _Season’s Greetings From Both Of Us._   “We can make that: _Season’s Greetings From Your Ex-Husband and That Other Guy You Had A Fling With.”_

Grinning, Ray punched Kowalski lightly on the arm.

“Now all we need is to find one for Frannie,” Kowalski went on, rooting through the cards.  Apparently he’d forgotten they were supposed to be cleaning the mess up, not making it worse.  “Do they still make cards that actually mention Jesus or Mary?  Except I don’t know if she’s forgiven me for all the immaculate-conception jokes last year.  Seriously, you have a test-tube baby two weeks before Christmas, what do you expect?”

“Don’t get me started,” Ray sighed.  “You know Frannie actually wanted to put ‘another trip to the sperm bank’ on her Christmas wish list?  The one that goes around to all our eighty-year-old aunties?”

Kowalski laughed.

“Hey, Frannie wants to get knocked up for Christmas, she could just ask me.”

“Bite your fucking tongue, Kowalski.”

“Hey, hey, just a joke.”  Kowalski raised his palms in surrender.

“I know, but it’s not funny,” Ray grumbled.

“Actually, it kind of is,” said Kowalski softly, slipping his arm around Ray’s shoulder.  “I mean, you know I wouldn’t do it, but what with the Stella thing and the me-being-you thing, so then if me and Frannie had a kid, it’d be like my fake-nephew and my nephew-in-law, and that would make Frannie your. . .”

“It wouldn’t make her anything.  She’d still be my sister.”

“No, I know, but you know that song where the guy marries the mother and his father marries the daughter and so then after everybody has kids he ends up being his own third cousin once removed—?”

“Grandfather.”

“What?”

“Grandfather.  The guy’s his own grandfather,” Ray told him.

“No, that can’t be it, that doesn’t work out right.  Does it?”  Kowalski frowned like he was trying to solve one of those algebra problems about car races in his head.

“ _I’m My Own Grandpa,_ it’s the title of the stupid song, for crying out loud.  Come on, let’s get the rest of the stuff on the list and get out of here before security busts our chops for busting up the store.”

He picked up the basket in one hand, grabbed Kowalski’s elbow by the other, and towed him away, still muttering under his breath about grandmothers and family trees.  Ray mentally added a phone call to Canada to their evening plans.


End file.
